When publicly going after a particular graffiti artist, you should be sure you will catch them. If you don’t, all your work will turn them into a much bigger phenomenon than before you tried to make an example of them. Gavin Newsom and Officer Putz, I’m looking in your direction. In the end it’s better to work with vandals, rather then against them.

Spend enough time wandering around New York City and you’ll start seeing the black and white stickers plainly stating, BNE. The fairly innocuous stickers found in New York, San Francisco and Tokyo sometimes contain Japanese script translating to “visit” or “come to” among other things. According to Gavins Newson, the mayor of San Francisco, the BNE stickers are so “large, unsightly, confusing and utterly inappropriate” that he’s offering $2,500 for the arrest of the artist, BNE or Benet.

Though this amount of coverage is a huge boost for Benet, the real star of the NY Times article is Officer Christopher Putz, the head of the San Francisco Vandal Squad.

Officer Putz, who has been on the graffiti beat since 2001, takes his work seriously; he will not allow his face to be photographed and he gives his age merely as “in my 30’s,” for fear of tipping his hand. “It’s a chess game,” he said.

He won’t be photographed, but he will be videotaped. Officer Putz’s chess game is poor. Even better is his weak explanation of broken windows theory:

If there is graffiti on the building, you might assume it is alright to throw gum wrappers on the ground and spit gum on the sidewalk.

Welcome to the 1950s! After those rapscallions are finished spitting on the sidewalk, they’ll be tipping cows and stuffing themselves into phone booths. Watch out, there’s a new sheriff in town, and he’s out to clean up Benet’s mess!

Photo of Benet roller by CrunchyPickle.
Photo of BNE Sticker by TriciaWang.